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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28809498">Family Matters</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eggling/pseuds/Eggling'>Eggling</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, discussions of past minor character death/loss of family members, just some adoptive siblings shopping together &amp; having a chat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:34:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,598</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28809498</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eggling/pseuds/Eggling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I know it’s silly – but I think about them being out there somewhere, waiting for me and not knowing where I am.”</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Jamie and Polly talk about the people they left behind.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jamie McCrimmon &amp; Polly Wright</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Family Matters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>on <a href="https://the--highlanders.tumblr.com/post/640554475077173248/family-matters">tumblr</a>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They must have been wandering around the shops and stalls for an hour or two, Jamie thought, scuffing his foot against the flagstone floor as he muffled a yawn. There had been a clock, right at the entrance to the covered marketplace, but they were long since out of sight of it, and he was left only to watch the sun inch its way across the sky through the great glass panels set into the arching roof. Polly had been picking over trinkets for the whole time, and he had been trailing after her, fiddling with the things they passed and watching other shoppers drift by. More than once, he had wished he had gone with Ben and the Doctor to investigate the crowds that had been gathering by the docks. They were sure to have found their way into some sort of trouble by now, he thought, shaking his head. Perhaps they ought not to have left them.</p><p>But Polly had insisted on shopping, and it would not have been right, to leave her on her own on an alien planet. Ben and the Doctor had each other, at least. And it was not as if he did not enjoy Polly’s company, he reminded himself. It had been enjoyable enough, poking around the shops with her, giggling at some things and murmuring their fascination at others.</p><p>“It’s funny, really,” she said, prodding at a few of the hanging glass baubles she was inspecting. They were shaped like blooming flowers, their petals edged with metal wire so they tinkled against each other prettily as they moved.</p><p>He watched her for a moment, expecting her to carry on, but she stayed silent. “What’s funny?” he prompted at last, reaching out to run his fingers across the closest bauble.</p><p>“My mother would have loved these.” Polly sighed, just a little wistfully. “I’d get her one, if -”</p><p>“If ye had any money left after buying that hat?”</p><p>Polly swiped at him, and he dodged out of the way, laughing. “I <i>like</i> my hat.” She reached up towards it, pulling the furry edges further over her ears and adjusting the crown of knitted leaves sewn around the top. “No, I mean – if I thought we’d ever get back to Earth, in my time.”</p><p>It was a funny thought, somehow, that Polly had a mother waiting for her at home. They had only known each other for a week, he reminded himself. It was hardly surprising that she had not had time to sit down and recite her entirely family tree to him. But they had been through so much together over that week – fish people and Cybermen and Macra and the odd ferociously hungry space-toad – and he felt strangely like he knew her back-to-front already. To find out that she had a mother, after everything, was startlingly mundane.</p><p>“You’ll get back to her.” He said it too confidently to fully believe it, and he knew from her expression that she felt the same. The Doctor’s driving was something else that he had become closely acquainted with, over their brief travels together. “You’ll see.”</p><p>“I suppose so.” Polly pursed her lips, tapping idly at the baubles. “I just think about her, sometimes. And my father. I know it’s silly – but I think about them being out there somewhere, waiting for me and not knowing where I am.” Jamie murmured a soft agreement. “What about you? Is there anyone waiting for you, back home?”</p><p>He drew back, startled and blinking. “A- aye,” he said. “My mother.” Guilt bubbled up in him at the thought of her, and he pressed it back down clumsily. But Polly had stirred something uncomfortable in him, talking about her parents waiting for her, and he could not entirely suppress his discomfort. The past week had been such a whirlwind of excitement and fear and wonder that he had given no thought to going home. But she was right, he thought with a pang. Somewhere, sometime, his mother would be thinking that he had died in battle. That she was alone. And he had rushed off to safety in the TARDIS on a whim, without even a second thought until it was far too late.</p><p>“What about your father?”</p><p>Another question that all but winded him. Once, it might have sliced through him as efficiently as any bayonet or bullet might have done. He found he missed the sharpness of the pain, in a twisted sort of way, like it was a bruise that he had comforted himself by pressing on. To feel it dulled down felt too much like forgetting. “Dead,” he said, more brusquely than he should have. Polly was not to have known, he reminded himself sternly. “An’ my brother too, before ye ask.”</p><p>Sure enough, Polly’s face fell, settling into something despicably close to pity. “Oh.” Her voice was very small. “I – I’m sorry, Jamie, I shouldn’t have asked.”</p><p>“’S alright.” He shrugged. “I’m alright.”</p><p>The words tripped off his tongue with an ease that should have sickened him. They had turned his stomach so often before, ever since his father had been lost. But it was not only time that had taken the edge off, he thought, at least for now. Standing in an alien marketplace under three suns, surrounded by people with purple skin and four arms, the deaths of his father and brother seemed unimaginably far away. Something that had happened to someone else, and ended up caught beneath his skin where nothing could scrub it out. Something that slept in him during the day and bit into him at night.</p><p>Polly was staring down at the floor, her eyes wide and her face full of regret. Shaking himself, Jamie nudged her side. “So,” he said, his voice full of a cheer he did not feel, “did ye – ye know – have anyone special back home?”</p><p>She laughed at that, and he smiled too, more genuinely this time. “No,” she said. “Nothing serious, anyway.”</p><p>“Ah.” He nodded, his smile turning pointed. “So ye an’ Ben -”</p><p>“Shush!” She shoved him harder this time, hard enough to rock him backwards. “Fair’s fair, what about you? Was there some pretty girl waiting for you to come back from the war?”</p><p>It was his turn to freeze, the blood in his veins turning to ice. “N-” He swallowed down the sharpness that had risen in his throat. “No,” he croaked out at last. “No, I didnae – there wasn’t anyone.”</p><p>He had thought – hoped, perhaps, naively and desperately – that his new friends would not ask him anything like that. There had been so much else to think about, more important things, and no need for anyone to worry themselves over it. No idle gossip, or well-meaning prodding, or gentle reminders of expectations that set his blood boiling and sent him stomping off towards the grazing pastures alone. But here he was, after only a few days, and already someone had asked.</p><p>“Oh!” A strange expression had come over Polly’s face. “Oh, I’m sorry, Jamie, I shouldn’t have assumed -” She hesitated. “A boy, then?”</p><p>It was a miracle, Jamie thought, that his heart did not give out on the spot. If it had been bad, to be asked if there had been a girl – then this was <i>infinitely</i> worse. He had buried this <i>thing</i> deep inside himself, this fear that he did not dare examine too closely, cold and sharp as canister shot. And now she had gone and struck at it, hard enough to fill his insides with sparks. She had said it so casually, too, like the world was not spinning around him, his insides all jumbled up from the jolt that had been sent through him. Like it was a perfectly normal thing to ask.</p><p>“No,” he gasped out, and he was sure his face was red, far too bright for her to believe him. She would get the wrong idea, and it would be terribly embarrassing for everyone - “Nothin’ like that.”</p><p>“So you don’t – you’re not -”</p><p>“<i>Polly</i>,” he said, as firmly as he could muster. It was the shakiness of his voice that quietened her, he was sure, not the authority of it, but either way, she was quiet. “Ye cannae just – <i>ask</i> that.” He glanced over his shoulder, scanning frantically for people who might have walked close enough to hear their conversation. “Maybe it’s different, where ye come from, but -”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” she interrupted. “I should have thought – it’s easy to forget where you’re from -”</p><p>“It’s alright.”</p><p>“And travelling with the Doctor, you get used to – oh, Jamie, I didn’t mean to offend you.”</p><p>“It’s alright,” he said again, a little more steadily. “I dinnae – I don’t mind.” He <i>did</i>, of course, but – he could hardly explain the real reason for it, could he? Not when it would sound dangerously like an admission of something he could not be sure he felt. “I wasnae offended,” he added weakly.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “Let’s just – forget I asked, alright?”</p><p>“Aye.” Jamie nodded, more to himself than to her. “Good.” Reaching out, he bumped his fingers against the baubles again. “I’ll get ye one.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“One of these. For your mother.” Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a handful of mismatched coins. “The Doctor gave me somethin’, too. An’ ye wouldnae want tae go home with nothin’ tae give her, would ye?”</p><p>Polly stared at him for a moment – but she softened at the certainty in his voice. “No, you’re right.” She draped her arm over his shoulders, taking the bauble from him. “I wouldn’t.”</p>
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